KANSAS CITY, Mo. — They say it has to stop.
The harrowing sound of gunfire has come to one Northland neighborhood, and neighbors said video proves their streets aren’t safe.
One man living near N. Brighton Avenue and N.E. 36th Street said the noise they heard on Saturday morning was so strong, it sounded like someone was banging on his front door.
He and other neighbors are concerned about a Ring doorbell camera video that shows gunshots from a semi-automatic rifle being fired into the air by a group of people, who ran once they finished playing with the gun.
The video, which police shared with FOX4, shows at least 13 gunshots being fired. Neighbors said their streets are usually quiet, but during the past two weeks, the sound of gunfire has been much harder to avoid.
“It sounded like fireworks. I didn’t even realize what it was until I saw the videos,” Amanda Ryan, who has lived near N.E. 36th Street all her life, said.
Ryan, a mother of three, was one of two residents who said they heard two volleys of gunfire this weekend, and she’s tired of watching her neighborhood go downhill.
“I would be happy if they could get on top of a lot of it. A couple of months ago, we had a shooting on the next block over. Somebody had a party in the middle of the night and there was a lot of gunfire,” Ryan said.
Police said there’s an old rock quarry nearby where people used to shoot guns for recreation, but that hasn’t been the case for some time.
Kansas City Police spokesperson Bill Keeney, a community interaction officer from KCPD’s Shoal Creek Patrol, said there’s even a small park in that vicinity, which is an added concern, given the gunfire.
“We need people to understand we don’t want people shooting firearms in the city,” Keeney said. “Anytime you have any kind of weapon — I don’t care if it’s a slingshot or a BB gun or a bow and arrow — there’s a grave responsibility that goes along with that. They should be utilized in a way that’s proper and legal.”
Keeney said as it stands, the only potential penalty on the table for the shooters is firing a gun inside city limits, which is a minor violation of city ordinance. As far as investigators know, nobody was hurt in this situation.
Keeney recommends that anyone who records video that could be useful in solving a crime to contact their local KCPD Community Interaction Officer. Anyone with knowledge of who’s been shooting guns on North Brighton is encouraged to call the CrimeStoppers TIPS Hotline at 816-474-TIPS.
